Team News: Baxter Makes Changes as Chiefs Look for First Away Result
Rob Baxter has made six changes to his starting line-up for a Round Five trip to Cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens to take on Northampton Saints this Sunday.
The Chiefs Director of Rugby has rotated his entire front row for a second week running as well as bringing Welsh internationalist Dafydd Jenkins into the starting line-up for the first time this season to captain the side.
After a strong first Gallagher Premiership start last weekend at Sandy Park, Ross Vintcent secures his place at number eight for a second week while fellow youngster Ben Hammersley rotates back into the side.
Baxter believes this could be a game which has the makings for a great representation of the sport as, on first inspection, a number of aspects of both side’s games are set in great parallels which could result in a great match-up.
“Saints very much back their attacking game, you can’t run away from that. Over the last couple of years there never seems to have been a game where they’re not capable of scoring tries. And that obviously creates pressure in itself, because it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got them in a close game or you feel like you’re pulling away – you always know they’ve got a try-scoring ability and they’ll back themselves to get back to that.”
“Outside of that, currently I think they’ve got one of the highest performing set pieces in the Premiership as well and that gives you a great foundation – as we’ve seen in the last four games.”
“And so, I think they’ll challenge us in a lot of the similar ways that we’ll look to challenge them. I would like to think it could be one of those games, that afterwards there could be a lot of really positive stories about the quality of a game – with two teams trying to be positive at the set piece and positive about how they play rugby.”
Chiefs climbed to top spot in the league table last weekend and topped their points scored total up to 151, however, an away win has alluded Baxter’s squad so far this season – a fact the squad will hope to change this weekend.
Also included in the starting XV is October’s RPA ’15 Under 23’ POTM Immanuel Feyi-Waboso as well as Henry Slade, fresh from his 150th Gallagher Premiership appearance last Sunday. The young pairing of Tom Cairns and Harvey Skinner then remain as the half-back pairing for another week running.
Exeter Chiefs:
15 Tommy Wyatt
14 Immanuel Feyi-Waboso
13 Henry Slade
12 Joe Hawkins
11 Ben Hammersley
10 Harvey Skinner
9 Tom Cairns
1 Nika Abuladze
2 Dan Frost
3 Josh Iosefa-Scott
4 Dafydd Jenkins (c)
5 Lewis Pearson
6 Ethan Roots
7 Jacques Vermeulen
8 Ross Vintcent
Replacements:
16 Jack Yeandle
17 Scott Sio
18 Ehren Painter
19 Rusi Tuima
20 Aidon Davis
21 Niall Armstrong
22 Will Haydon-Wood
23 Tom Hendrickson